God Must Laugh

Logo courtesy of Steve Knight

The Open Source Sermon experiment is complete! If you missed it, here’s a list of the relevant posts:

• In the begining
• Our topic!
• Our texts!
• The final product

First thing: thank you! It was a blast working with all of you to create something new. Reaction on Sunday morning was very good. I am convinced that it was a stronger, more compelling sermon because of your involvement, and I’m very happy to pronounce the experiment a success. (Here’s the text and video in case you missed it)

How did it go? As I said above, response from the congregation was strong and positive. As for how it went from my perspective in the pulpit, it was fun and a little scary. I found myself a little more tied to my manuscript than usual because I wanted to honor everyone’s contributions. I also spoke more quickly than is normal for me because it was longer than my usual sermons. On the other hand, there was a sense of comfort or community because I felt like I was speaking for all of us. It felt like you were up there with me. (Yeah, cheesy, whatever. It’s true)

What did you do right? We took the time to lay the groundwork. In fact, we spent much more time on groundwork than we did on the actual sermon. We took our time picking a topic, picking texts, aligning principles and purpose. All those discussions and agreements meant that the sermon itself came together much more quickly and smoothly than I had expected. I can’t emphasize enough how important this was. From the very start I feared our experiment would result in a chaotic mishmash of conflicting ideas and spam. The fact that we wound up with a coherent and compelling sermon testifies to the integrity of the contributors and the hard work we did coming to consensus before we started writing the sermon.

What would you change?

• I wouldn’t use PBwiki again. Their customer support is great and they gave me excellent administrative controls, but a number of people complained about the interface. People had a hard time signing up, and once they signed up they had a hard time making edits. I think I’d try Wikia next time. Their interface is very clean and simple.
• I’d make the whole thing simpler. There was way too much “Click here, check there, sign up here, wait for confirmation, blah blah blah” when the whole reason people got involved was because it was a cool idea. People wanted to contribute! It was my job to make it as easy as possible for them to do so, and in my excitement I left too many stumbling blocks between them and their goal.
• I would try to open it up to more involvement. A truly open source project would be less controlled and have many more contributors. I wasn’t brave enough for that on the first go, but I’d definitely take a step in that direction if we tried it again.

What did you learn? The Pareto principle is your friend. I spent a long time lamenting the 80/20 rule as it applied to church life, but this experiment renewed my perspective. A small, committed group did most of the heavy lifting. The members of that group shifted during each stage of the project, but there was always a core keeping things on track and pushing the project forward. Then there was a cloud of of interested observers, some were too busy, some were too shy, but whatever their reason they didn’t contribute in large ways. The crazy thing was, they contributed in their own little ways and all those tiny contributions made a big difference. Even if your only contribution was an idea that never made it into the final draft, your presence in the conversation made the whole thing stronger. Thank you.

Will you do it again? I honestly don’t know. Certainly I benefited from the experience, and the sermon was better for it, but I still have some real questions. Part of the reason the sermon worked was because it was about technology. Would a similar format work with a more traditional subject? Also, we spent almost two months on this thing! Most preachers I know spend a week on theirs. Would it still work in a shorter time window? Those aren’t deal-breakers. I hear some responses knocking around in the back of my head already, but I’d have to mull it over a bit before I said yes. For sure I wouldn’t do it the same way, but a second experiment is not out of the question.

What do you think? What did we do right? What could we do better? What did you learn? Should we try again?

P.S. – Thank you to everyone who linked to the project!

Emergent Village
Think Christian
The Church Geek
Gemeindearbeit
Ranges Community Church